This invention relates generally to multiplex communications, and more particularly to optical frequency division multiplex communications.
Multiplexing as applied to transmission systems, is a scheme of utizing the same transmission path for many different signals. However, in order that the signals be separable at the output end of the transmission path, each must be uniquely different from all of the others. In a frequency division multiplex system, to which the present invention relates, each signal, or channel of the system, is assigned a discrete portion of the transmitted frequency spectrum. Thus, many relatively narrow bandwidth channels can be accommodated within a single bandwidth transmission system
Recent interest in optical communications--the transmission of information using light as a carrier--has produced a need for a frequency division multiplex communication system that is optical in nature.